The Benefit of An Empty Head

I'm The Hungry Disciple, and I've been chewing on Newness!

When Jesus began His ministry He did not go down to the local synogogue and choose the top 12 Bar Mitzvah boys. He could have. He had been one of those young men himself, and considered discussing The Scriptures as being about His Father's business. Yet The Holy Spirit did not instruct Him to choose those Bible students, among them Saul of Tarsus, as students of The Kingdom of God. No He was instructed to choose simple fishermen, a tax collector, a political rebel and nobodys to teach His New and Living Way.

One of the ways He explained His choice was by saying that it ruins the wine and the wineskin to attempt to put new wine into old wineskins.  We all know that grape juice becoming wine produces a gas and the container must stretch. The Hebrews used animal skins or stomachs to store liquids and they were used over and over and over. Eventually, after being used to hold new wine many times they were stretched to the point they had no more give in them. We are a culture of TMI-too much information!  If there is one thing this culture is not, it's empty-headed!  

Jesus had new revelation and He knew He had to put it in empty-headed people. Jesus said  those who are used to old wine won't like the taste of new wine, but will say the old is better.  Jesus had to find people who were not so full of the old picture of God and the old religious concepts that their brains would explode from new revelation, and He wanted people who would love the taste of what He had to say.  The crooks, the sinners and the prostitutes loved what Jesus had to say so much they would follow Him for days without eating real food!  We know that the religious experts of Jesus day heard His words and grew suspicious, envious and were absolutely certain they knew it all.

Isn't is just like God to find value in what everyone else considers worthless?  So if you feel a little empty-headed sometimes, praise God!  He's looking for someone just like you! Someone with some room in their minds for new revelation about Him!

Jesus used wineskins as a picture of human beings because they were ugly new or old just like our flesh, but as God showed us with David the shepard boy, the outside isn't as important as the inside where God is concerned. Peter, after spending lots of time listening to Jesus declared Him the Messiah, anointed Son of The Living God. Jesus responded by calling Peter blessed because what was in him had been put there by God The Father! Revelation from God is the rock Jesus spoke of as the "place" God would build His Kingdom!

The reason Jesus used new wine as the example for revelation knowledge is because the transformation of grapes into wine produces something!  The process produces lots of bubbles; gas that expands and stretches the wineskin and eventually must be vented!  Something's got to give when grapes and yeast are brought together. Spiritually speaking our capacity gets bigger and bigger until revelation knowledge comes bursting forth as new Truth from God.

The disciples did not have the presence of The Holy Spirit in them until Pentecost. This is why it was so difficult for them to grasp the gravity of many things Jesus told them. Remember Jesus told them before His crucifixion that there were many things He would like to tell them but they would not have been able to bear it. They may have been new wine skins but they were still flesh. Their poor little heads would have exploded.

In ancient times people kept their wine skins supple, soft and more elastic by oiling them. Flesh has a tendency to dry out, crack and become brittle. A little oil keeps flesh plump, tender and yielding.  Just think of the difference in the disciples on The Day of Pentecost! Educated people from all cultures wondered how uneducated fishermen could become such eloquent and powerful speakers. They were so exuberant many thought them actually drunk. They were not filled with wine!! They were filled with the Holy Spirit. Their capacity for Christ and revelation knowledge exploded!

God's most powerful miracle was the conversion of Saul into Paul. Saul, a revelation killer, a man completely convinced he knew everything there was to know about The God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, miraculously emptied of all he knew by an encounter with The Living Christ. A complete conversion; a man dead in religion, who murdered in the name of God, suddenly becoming Paul, a man who poured forth life changing revelation knowledge of Jesus Christ till his last breath. The old Saul was utterly gone. Everything Paul knew he counted as dung compared to knowing Jesus afresh every single day.

Come to the Word with an open mind. Seek The Lord with an empty head. Leave all your religious teaching behind. You are a new creature! A creature born of Divine conception.

How "old wineskin" is the idea that God saved us so we could have a more moral lifestyle. We will have a new lifestyle when we realize we are new beings.  LOOK!! God is saying: ALL THINGS are new to you. What you knew about me yesterday is NEW again today! COME SEE!

New wine stretches us. It produces something alive in us. It expands our boundaries. It bubbles out of us. How much more, as new creatures, should we personally experience ever increasing revelation of The Gospel of Jesus Christ, and His Kingdom.